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BackgroundIn this paper, we argue for Gender as a Sociocultural Variable (GASV) as a complement to Sex as a Biological Variable (SABV). Sex (biology) and gender (sociocultural behaviors and attitudes) interact to influence health and disease processes across the lifespan-which is currently playing out in the COVID-19 pandemic. This study develops a gender assessment tool-the Stanford Gender-Related Variables for Health Research-for use in clinical and population research, including large-scale health surveys involving diverse Western populations. While analyzing sex as a biological variable is widely mandated, gender as a sociocultural variable is not, largely because the field lacks quantitative tools for analyzing the influence of gender on health outcomes.MethodsWe conducted a comprehensive review of English-language measures of gender from 1975 to 2015 to identify variables across three domains: gender norms, gender-related traits, and gender relations. This yielded 11 variables tested with 44 items in three US cross-sectional survey populations: two internet-based (N = 2051; N = 2135) and a patient-research registry (N = 489), conducted between May 2017 and January 2018.ResultsExploratory and confirmatory factor analyses reduced 11 constructs to 7 gender-related variables: caregiver strain, work strain, independence, risk-taking, emotional intelligence, social support, and discrimination. Regression analyses, adjusted for age, ethnicity, income, education, sex assigned at birth, and self-reported gender identity, identified associations between these gender-related variables and self-rated general health, physical and mental health, and health-risk behaviors.ConclusionOur new instrument represents an important step toward developing more comprehensive and precise survey-based measures of gender in relation to health. Our questionnaire is designed to shed light on how specific gender-related behaviors and attitudes contribute to health and disease processes, irrespective of-or in addition to-biological sex and self-reported gender identity. Use of these gender-related variables in experimental studies, such as clinical trials, may also help us understand if gender factors play an important role as treatment-effect modifiers and would thus need to be further considered in treatment decision-making.

Sex and gender are distinct terms that must be used correctly. Data regarding sex and gender may be collected using a 2-step method that separates biological sex and self-reported gender identity. The PhenX Toolkit, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is one tool that provides investigators with recommended standard data-collection protocols. Another tool is the Diversity Minimal Item Set questionnaire. Importantly, sex and gender interact: for example, pain has both biological aspects (sex differences in electrical, ischemic, thermal, pressure, and muscle pain sensitivity) and cultural aspects (gender factors in how people report pain and how physicians understand and treat pain in patients). Gender norms, identity, and relations all impact patient care. Gender norms, for instance, may influence how a person experiences pain, gender identity may influence a person's willingness to report pain, and gender relations may influence a physician's gendered expectations in relation to a patient's gendered behaviors. Clinicians may perceive women's pain to be psychological; as a result, women may receive more nonspecific diagnoses, wait longer for treatment, and receive more antidepressants and fewer analgesics than men. Research on gender-diverse people and pain is just now emerging. Resources for methods of reporting include The Lancet, Nature, and the Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) Guidelines. We must consider all relevant factors intersecting with sex and gender, including age, disabilities, educational background, ethnicity, family configuration, geographic location, race, sexuality, social and economic status, sustainability, and more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Author(s): Cara Tannenbaum [sup.1] , Robert P. Ellis [sup.2] , Friederike Eyssel [sup.3] , James Zou [sup.4] [sup.5] , Londa Schiebinger [sup.6] Author Affiliations: (1) Institute of Gender and Health, [...], The goal of sex and gender analysis is to promote rigorous, reproducible and responsible science. Incorporating sex and gender analysis into experimental design has enabled advancements across many disciplines, such as improved treatment of heart disease and insights into the societal impact of algorithmic bias. Here we discuss the potential for sex and gender analysis to foster scientific discovery, improve experimental efficiency and enable social equality. We provide a roadmap for sex and gender analysis across scientific disciplines and call on researchers, funding agencies, peer-reviewed journals and universities to coordinate efforts to implement robust methods of sex and gender analysis. The authors discuss the potential for sex and gender analysis to foster scientific discovery, improve experimental efficiency and enable social equality.

Dr. Londa Schiebinger is an international leader on the intersection of sex, gender, and science. In this interview with Cell , she discusses the Gendered Innovations project, the persistent STEM gender gap, the importance of considering sex- and gender-related variables and intersectionality in research, and the future of sex and gender research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ocean is facing unprecedented challenges due to the escalating impacts of climate change and other pressures threatening ecosystems and the many benefits they provide. Effective strategies for reversing the loss of biodiversity rely on knowledge of how marine organisms, populations, and communities respond to environmental change. A fundamental but often overlooked biological characteristic of organisms is sex, which is distinct from sociocultural gender. Here, we examined how sex influences marine organisms, populations, and communities, through a review of sex analysis applications in marine biological research. We found that sex broadly affects the morphology, physiology, behavior, and distribution of organisms and populations across taxa, with evidence of sex‐specific differences in survival to thermal stress, timing of biological mechanisms, and energetics. To facilitate further integration of sex into marine biological research, we synthesize current approaches, discuss methodological and logistical challenges, and lay out guidelines for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientists are likely not to be interested in thinking about housework. Housework is, however, related to the life of the mind. Scientists wear clean clothes to the lab, eat food procured and prepared by someone, and live in reasonably clean houses. This labor used to be done by stay-at-home wives. Now, housework is often done by wives and partners who are also full-time professionals--and the women the authors discuss in this study are scientists at thirteen of the top research universities in the United States. Findings from their study, based on data collected in 2006-2007, show that despite women's considerable gains in science in recent decades, female scientists do nearly twice as much housework as their male counterparts. Partnered women scientists at places like Stanford University do 54 percent of the cooking, cleaning, and laundry in their households; partnered men scientists do just 28 percent. This translates to more than ten hours a week for women--in addition to the nearly sixty hours a week they are already working as scientists--and to just five hours for men. These findings have important policy implications. Over the past three decades, governments, universities, and industries have dedicated often robust resources to efforts to increase the number of women scientists--and yet progress in attracting more women to science has stalled. In this study, the authors zero in on the obligation of household labor. They analyze the division of household labor in scientists' homes and their strategies to lighten the household load in order to maintain highly productive careers. They argue that work done in the home is very much an academic issue--not peripheral in any way to scientists' professional lives. Understanding how housework relates to women's careers is one new piece in the puzzle of how to attract more women to science. The authors' policy recommendation provides a new solution to one key aspect of balancing life and work. They propose that employers provide benefits to support housework. Many universities already offer retirement, health-care, and child-care supplements; some even support housing and tuition benefits. The authors recommend that institutions provide a package of flexible benefits that employees can customize to support aspects of their private lives in ways that save time and enhance professional productivity. Institutions need to think of housework benefits as part of the structural cost of doing business. With lab costs running into the millions of dollars, supporting the human resource involved--scientists' ability to be more productive--takes full advantage of investments in space and equipment. (Contains 4 figures and 1 note.)

The voyages of scientific discovery conjure in our minds images of Sir Hans Sloane bioprospecting in Jamaica in 1687 or Joseph Banks voyaging aboard the Endeavour to Tahiti and New Zealand in 1768. But women also set foot on rickety and unsure ocean-going vessels in the 18th century in the service of science. The German-born Maria Sibylla Merian voyaged from Amsterdam to Surinato in South America in 1699 to search for exotic caterpillars. She sought one that would produce a thread to rival silk, a costly and much sought-after fabric in early-modern Europe. In the process, she produced one of the most celebrated 18th-century natural history books.

Background: In recent years, interest has grown in whether and to what extent demographic diversity sparks discovery and innovation in research. At the same time, topic modeling has been employed to discover differences in what women and men write about. This study engages these two strands of scholarship to explore associations between changing researcher demographics and research questions asked in the discipline of history. Specifically, we analyze developments in history as women entered the field. Methods: We focus on author gender in diachronic analysis of history dissertations from 1980 (when online data is first available) to 2015 and a select set of general history journals from 1950 to 2015. We use correlated topic modeling and network visualizations to map developments in research agendas over time and to examine how women and men have contributed to these developments. Results: Our summary snapshot of aggregate interests of women and men for the period 1950 to 2015 identifies new topics associated with women authors: gender and women's history, body history, family and households, consumption and consumerism, and sexuality. Diachronic analysis demonstrates that while women pioneered topics such as gender and women's history or the history of sexuality, these topics broaden over time to become methodological frameworks that historians widely embraced and that changed in interesting ways as men engaged with them. Our analysis of history dissertations surface correlations between advisor/advisee gender pairings and choice of dissertation topic. Conclusions: Overall, this quantitative longitudinal study suggests that the growth in women historians has coincided with the broadening of research agendas and an increased sensitivity to new topics and methodologies in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the aims, strategies, developments, successes, and challenges of Gendered Innovations from its inception in 2005 to today. Gendered Innovations employs methods of sex, gender, and intersectional analysis to overcome past bias and, importantly, to create new knowledge. It seeks to harness the creative power of sex, gender, and intersectional analysis for innovation and discovery. The operative question is: does considering these factors add valuable dimensions to research? Do they take research in new directions? Gendered Innovations: (1) develops practical methods of sex, gender, and intersectional analysis specifically for natural scientists and engineers; and (2) provides case studies as concrete illustrations of how sex, gender, and intersectional analysis leads to discovery. The article discusses where Gendered Innovations fits within the equality, diversity, and inclusion landscape. The article focuses on the international reach of the project, collaborative and interdisciplinary methods for developing materials, sample case studies, and policy initiatives that support excellence in science. Case studies previewed include machine translation, facial recognition, menstrual cups, and marine science; these examples work to support social equalities and also the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve the outcomes of research and medicine, government-based international research funding agencies have implemented various types of policies and mechanisms with respect to sex as a biological variable and gender as a sociocultural factor. After the 1990s, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and the European Commission (EC) began requesting that applicants address sex and gender considerations in grant proposals, and offering resources to help the scientific community integrate sex and gender into biomedical research. Although it is too early to analyze data on the success of all of the policies and mechanisms implemented, here we review the use both of carrots (incentives) and sticks (requirements) developed to motivate researchers and the entire scientific research enterprise to consider sex and gender influences on health and in science. The NIH focused on sex as a biological variable (SABV) aligned with an initiative to enhance reproducibility through rigor and transparency; CIHR instituted a sex- and gender-based analysis (SGBA) policy; and the EC required the integration of the "gender dimension," which incorporates sex, gender, and intersectional analysis into research and innovation. Other global efforts are briefly summarized. Although we are still learning what works, we share lessons learned to improve the integration of sex and gender considerations into research. In conjunction with refining and expanding the policies of funding agencies and mechanisms, private funders/philanthropic groups, editors of peer-reviewed journals, academic institutions, professional organizations, ethics boards, health care systems, and industry also need to make concerted efforts to integrate sex and gender into research, and we all must bridge across silos to promote systemwide solutions throughout the biomedical enterprise. For example, policies that encourage researchers to disaggregate data by sex and gender, the development of tools to better measure gender effects, or policies similar to SABV and/or SGBA adopted by private funders would accelerate progress. Uptake, accountability for, and a critical appraisal of sex and gender throughout the biomedical enterprise will be crucial to achieving the goal of relevant, reproducible, replicable, and responsible science that will lead to better evidence-based, personalized care for all, but especially for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WHY AREN'T MORE WOMEN IN SCIENCE? Top Researchers Debate the Evidence. Edited by Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams. xx + 254 pp. American Psychological Association, 2007. $59.95. MOTHERHOOD, [...]